The Campaign of Hector Rodriguez

WE RACE down the stairs, two at a time, loyal friends behind us, spreading the word. “Vote for Birnbaum and Rodriguez! ¡Viva Sam! ¡Viva Hector! ¡Viva Louise!” Carlos is standing in the doorway of his room on the second floor, looking at the girls with the others from his class. “¡Mira! ¡Miral” cries one of his classmates. “Hey, chica—Carlos likes you!” They lean on each other as the crowds go by, drool on their lips, but Carlos says nothing. He’s real little, a stringy guy, but he is my best friend. We come on the boat together from Puerto Rico.

I push the others aside and give him my hand to shake. “We made it,” I say. “A fusion ticket—Sam, the black girl Louise, and me.” Carlos smiles with his yellow teeth. His eyelids hang down. “Look,” says Sam, slapping Carlos on the arm. “Can we count on you to swing the C.R.M.D. vote our way?”

Carlos shrugs. “It’s okay,” I say, and Carlos says he will get the C.R.M.D. vote in line. C.R.M.D. is for Children with Retarded Mental Development, but do not believe it. Carlos is quick at arithmetic, he knows the lifetime batting averages of every Spanish baseball player. Behind his droopy eyelids there is fire. He wins medals in running. He is as smart as half the school. Only he cannot read. So they put him in C.R.M.D. But he does not care. In C.R.M.D. nobody bothers you. There is a television set and shoeshine kits and knock-hockey. He makes much money shining the teachers’ shoes. In his class he is the leader, and now that he is in C.R.M.D. nobody makes fun of the others the way they used to.

Except Carmen. Carmen de las tetas grandes, as she is known on our street. Carmen Quiñones, five foot two, fourteen years old, in the seventh grade, guided missiles on her chest. She comes down the hall now, her friends with her, chattering and chewing, swinging their asses to the music from Carmen’s radio. Carmen stops when she sees me, and tosses her head back like she is Sophia Loren. “¡Qué tetas grandes!” I exclaim. She sneers at me. Benito Lopez, from Carlos’ class, his eyes are spinning. “Hey, Benito,” Carmen says. “You like me?”

Benito nods, his mouth open, happy.

Carmen throws her head back and laughs. “Well, I no like you!”

This causes great laughter from the other girls, and as they pass down the hall Carlos spits in their direction. “¡Puta! ¡Puta!” he shouts, above the noise.

Carmen shakes her oil-black hair and turns on Carlos. “¡Su madre es una negra!”

Carlos gives her the sign. She laughs and walks on, around the corner.

“How about her?” Sam asks. “She controls a big bloc of the female Puerto Rican vote—”

“You leave her to me,” I say. “Adios, Carlos. I have a class. After school, meet me—we have a campaign to plan.”

I am the leader of my people—Hector Rodriguez, running for vice-president of Junior High School Number 54, Manhattan, on the Green Party. Everything has gone according to our plans. We are unbeatable. Sam Birnbaum of the ninth grade for president—white and Jewish; Hector Rodriguez of the eighth grade for vice-president—Catholic and Puerto Rican; Louise Carr of the seventh grade for secretary—black and Protestant. “I’m counting on you to bring in the Puerto Rican vote,” Sam says to me, his arm around my shoulder as we make our way downstairs. “Do not fear,” I say to him. “You are my good friend, Sam.” I pound him on the back while all around us students give congratulations. “¡Viva Rodriguez!” they shout. “¡Viva Birnbaum!”

In the lunchroom I get Carmen in the corner. “I like you, Carmen,” I say. She chews on an egg-salad sandwich and presses the radio to her ear. Lesley Gore is singing. “I mean it,” I say. “I go for you.”

“Yeah?” she says. “Well, I no go for you. You better watch out how you get fresh or I get my boyfriend after you.” She telling the truth about that. Her boyfriend, he is the star pitcher for the Camaradas, a windmill delivery, a true strikeout king. On Saturday in Central Park I see them play. Carmen is there, and when he is not pitching he and Carmen are against a tree, loving each other up with passion. He is mean-looking, with a mustache, at least nineteen years old. All the men on his team have women, and all day in Central Park they love them up and drink beer and play baseball.

“You going to vote for me, Carmen?” I say. I let my hand fall against la teta grande. She chews her gum and listens to the radio as if I am doing nothing to her. “I like you, Carmen. I mean it. I go for you.”

“What you give me if I vote for you?” she asks.

“I make a big party in your honor,” I say. “For you and all your friends—a party like you have never been to. Better than the fiestas in San Juan!”

“Oh, yeah? How you do that—?”

“Sam,” I say. “His parents are rich Jews who live on Central Park West. At election time they will be gone, cruising to Puerto Rico with the other rich Jews, and we can use his house, his liquor. I promise you, Carmen—you get your friends to vote for us and I will show you a good time—”

She comes closer, smiling. “For me you make the party? In my honor?”

“Only for you, Carmen. You know that. Only for you.”

She laughs with passion. “Hector!” she says, grabbing me under the mouth. She flashes her teeth and shakes my head from side to side, holding me strong by the chin. “What a man you will be some day! Aiee, what you do to me!” She gives me my hand back. The door to the outside opens and the students charge to it. I walk into the yard and go around to the side with Carmen. With nobody around, I do things she likes.

“Okay,” she says. “You make a party for me and I vote for you.

“What about your boyfriend?” I say.

She bites my neck. “Ha! What you think—while I am in school he waits only for me? I know him—¡bastardo! ¡Bastardo barroso!”

I press her against the bricks. “I tell you something, Carmen,” I say. “He is old now and I am young, but some day I am going to be somebody. This is the beginning. Vice-president this year, president next year. I have it planned. In high school and then in college. You stick with me, Carmen, you do okay.”

“You are smart Hector,” she says. “You in the class with all the Jews.”

“Some day I will have a mansion on Riverside Drive and an estate in Puerto Rico—servants, yachts, a swimming pool, my own airplane. You think I going to be a dumb spic all my life, you crazy.” I visit la teta grande for the last time. “This is only the beginning, Carmen.”

After school, in Sam’s house, we begin our work. The smart kids from the Special Progress classes, they are making posters and tags, telephoning their friends. I tell them what to put on the signs: VOTE FOR THE GREEN PARTY—THE PARTY OF ALL THE STUDENTS! In English and in Spanish: ¡EL PARTIDO DE TODOS LOS ESTUDIANTES! The good artists draw pictures of us—black, Spanish, white; on the floor in the bedroom, I put Louise in charge of the tags—VOTE FOR SAM! … I LIKE HECTOR!…GO FOR GREEN … cutting them out of paper, punching holes, stringing them for distribution.

“Louise is O.K.,” Sam says. Then he asks if I want to take a drink from his father’s supply. Sam is all right. He is my good friend. Some day he will be a famous man—he is a scholar and an athlete. In the lavatories of our school, he is the man to come to for a cigarette. We toast to our victory. “C’mere,” he says. “I got something to show you.”

In his father’s room, from a dresser, boxes of prophylactics. “Votes,” he says, striking a match on his heel and lighting a cigar. I take one. Two girls come in, white and clean, and he issues instructions to them. A new idea for a poster: THIS STUDENT VOTES FOR SAM, HECTOR, AND LOUISE! We will tape mirrors to the posters. Sam starts to take money from his wallet to buy the mirrors, but Carlos stops him. He says he will get mirrors for nothing.

During the next week, we move our campaign into high gear. Every day more and more voters swing to the Green Party. Sam is cheered by the students when he enters the schoolyard, I am hoisted on shoulders and carried about, Louise is queen of the seventh grade. Everyone wears our tags. We start a blackboard campaign, workers assigned to every room in the school. I give speeches in the lunchroom—we promise them everything: dances, boat rides, tournaments, picnics. And all the while Carlos is blazing the path to victory with his own campaign. Every day he has new gifts for the students. One day it is lipsticks for the girls, the next day combs for the boys: ballpoint pens, boxes of gold stars, candles, thumbtacks, cans of hair spray, golf balls—his resources are endless, his sheepish smile dazzling. Where does one get a friend like Carlos?

In their desperation the other party spreads a rumor—Sam and I, they say, we are too close, like little birds. In the bathrooms it is written: Sam Loves Hector. We call a council and I decide quickly. “There is only one thing to do,” I say. “You’ve got a head on your shoulders, Hector,” Sam says, and the next day we walk through the schoolyard holding hands. Boys and girls roar with laughter. At the gates at three o’clock, Sam’s friends from the S.P. classes stop one of every five students and ask them who they expect to vote for. The polls show us leading by a three-to-one margin, and we publish the results. “Nobody likes to back a loser,” I say. “It shames them.”

When I return to West 8oth Street at night, I am a hero. The Latin-American music I love fills the air. The naked babies run under my feet, the girls grab for my muscles, I am asked to play stickball by the younger boys. My grandmother, proud, sits in the window behind the fire escape and compares me to Roosevelt, Kennedy, Marin. The old men in their undershirts, playing cards and shooting craps, they ask when I am running for mayor. Carmen traps me in the hallway.

“You so famous now, you forget about Carmen?” she asks.

“I never forget you, Carmen,” I say, moving in. She shoves me back.

“I get all my friends to vote for you and now, in the halls, you hardly see me.” She spits at my feet. “Always with the blond-haired girls!”

“You are the only girl for me—¡querida Carmen!” I breathe on her neck and hold her to me from behind. “This is only politics, Carmen. A dirty business. When the election is over and I am vice-president, we will have good times. Do you forgive me?”

“I am Spanish and I am proud of it!” she says. Her chest expands with pride. My pride matches hers. “There is no one like you, Carmen,” I say.

She grabs the hair in back of my head with both hands. “[Hector! ¡Aiee! [Hector!” she cries. A minute later she runs for the door. “My boyfriend will see—” Then, eyes laughing, she is gone into the street. A bottle crashes down from a window and she screams marvelous curses, her head thrown back, her fist raised.

At school Carmen tells everybody about the party I am making in her honor. When Carlos hears, he broods. “She always make fun of us,” he says. I console him, spending my lunch period in his classroom, letting him beat me at knock-hockey. The other boys fight each other for the chance to shine my shoes. The teacher leaves me in charge and goes to the lounge to sleep. Everybody knows about him. He was a boxer in the Marines. He has no discipline problems. On the first day of the year, he takes the strongest boy in the class and beats him up. On the second day he makes the strongest boy beat up the next strongest. Who would believe what a C.R.M.D. boy says? Carlos has a supply of candy bars in the clothes closet. When the period ends, he goes into the hall with his chocolates, getting votes for me. Carmen comes toward us, her radio blasting, her body swaying. “Hey Hector,” she says, and points to Carlos. “You let this moron vote for you?”

Then Carlos curses Carmen’s mother. Carmen flies at him, her nails rip into the side of his face, and a minute later the assistant principal is tearing them apart. His eyes bulge from his face when he sees that Carmen’s sweater is torn down the middle. He covers her with his jacket and she strides through the crowd with him, her jaw thrust forward. Carlos is bloody. I put my arm around his shoulder and he twists away.

“¡Traidor!” The words cut into my heart.

“Carlos. Please—” But my words will not reach him. The nurse is escorting him away from me. His head is bent, his body tired. When he leaves the school at three o’clock, he sneaks along the fence.

“Is this the Carlos I know?” I say to him, walking by his side. “Is this the Carlos who leaped into the giant war canoe at the Museum of Natural History?” I see a faint spark in his eyes, but it is nothing like the flash that was there when he led the charge into the canoe. I fan the spark. “Is this the Carlos who ran five miles every morning to bring the fishermen their breakfasts at Mayaguez?” His head lifts. “Is this the Carlos who received the praise of the fishermen for the way he sewed their nets?”

We go into Central Park. Sam is waiting for us and we rent a rowboat. Carlos takes the oars and heads for open waters. When we are past the bridge, Sam reveals his newest book: Ideal Marriage, Its Physiology and Technique. “I copped it from my father’s study.” He reads and Carlos and I go into a trance. The words are glorious: vestibule of the vagina…phenomenon of erection…first intermezzo of aphorisms…the love-bite… This is what we have been waiting for. The chapters: Positions, Converse and Averse…Communion and After-Glow…Contraception…

From the corner of my eye I see Carmen and two friends coming toward us in a boat. Carlos sees them also, and he rows furiously. We ram their boat at full speed, and as they work to steady themselves Carlos laughs. Then Carmen laughs also. “Hey, Carlos—you mad at me?” Carlos sulks. “Rafaela say she like you. You like her?” From behind Carmen, Rafaela smiles shyly. “I got something for you, Carmen,” I say, and hold up the book. Sam laughs. I suggest that we switch boats. The girls say they don’t know, but Carmen’s eyes dance and Rafaela blushes. We line our boat up alongside theirs. “Come on,” I say. “I give you a good time—we race our boats and ram each other and things.” They agree. Carmen will come in our boat and Carlos will go into theirs with Rafaela. “I help you,” I say. Carmen stands up. Sam holds onto their boat. I give her my hand and she steps toward us. Then Carlos’ eyes blaze, he shrieks into the air—“¡Aiee! ¡Puta! ¡Ramera!”—and with superhuman strength he shoves his oar against the side of their boat. For a second I hold onto Carmen’s hand. Her eyes and mouth open wide, her skirt flares out, space appears between our boats, and then, her legs spread wide like the sides of a triangle, she descends with a great splash into the water of the Central Park Lake.

Carlos rows like ten men, his eyes sparkling. Carmen rises to the surface, screaming curses. “¡Bastardo! ¡Idiota barroso!” Even from a great distance, as boats speed to her rescue, I can see the fire in her eyes. “I get you!” she yells. “I get you!”

Carlos’ grin will not leave. But Sam does not smile. “Couldn’t you wait till after the election?” he asks. I sit next to him in the rear of the boat, my arm over his shoulder. I tell him there is nothing to worry about. I have calculated. Even without all of Carmen’s votes, we will win by a handsome margin. “What is important now,” I say, “is not the election—but the victory party.” My heart swells. “It will be a party no one will ever forget.” I take the book from Sam. “Is it not for us to see to the educational needs of our students?”

I explain my idea and his face is alive again. He pounds me on the back and praises my imagination. He is prepared to take risks, he says. We bring our boat in and sit at the café which overlooks the lake, eating hot dogs and plotting our adventure on Department of Parks napkins. Sam smokes a cigar, Carlos looks at the illustrations in the book, and I lean back, satisfied.

At school we let it be known that we are the educational party, and when I reveal our plans to Carmen she says she will swing her girls back to our side. She says she does not hold us responsible for Carlos’ actions.

We proceed with our plans. At four o’clock we meet outside Mr. Weiss’ pharmacy. Sam has the rubber masks—Kennedy, Ringo, Fidel. When the store is empty, we slip inside and I put the sign on the window: STORE CLOSED. WILL OPEN AGAIN AT 5. Carlos is lookout. I draw the shades. Mr. Weiss laughs when he sees our masks. “What can I do for you boys?” We tell him what we want and he laughs again. With one sweep of my arm I clear a counter of its merchandise. I show him our briefcases, open and empty. He goes for the phone, but Sam is ready and cuts the cord with his scissors. “The pills,” I say. His eyes dart this way and that. I show him in the book. “The pills!” I repeat. “Your daughter, she in my class—you want her safe?”

“My God!” he says. “Who are you?”

“The pills!” Sam says in his most vicious voice. He splat-ers bottles of perfume against a wall. I reason with Mr. Weiss, telling him he will help the population problem, keep innocent girls out of trouble, prevent half-breeds. He fills our briefcases with pills. We head for the door. “There are men planted across the street,” I say. “If you leave here during the next hour, you will pay.”

“I want diagrams,” Carlos says. “I don’t trust pills.

“Give him what he wants,” Sam says. “All sizes.”

We stay at the door while Carlos gets what he wants. Behind the face of John F. Kennedy there are happy eyes. “Let’s beat it,” Sam says.

We leave the store and take our masks off, stuffing them into a garbage can. We proceed up Columbus Avenue. Then, coming toward us, we see them—three cops. “Act natural,” I say, but when we come to them, they stop us. “Let’s see what you got in those briefcases,” they say. In a doorway I see her, smiling triumphantly.

Sam looks at me. I look at Carlos. “Now!” I say, and we break from the cops and run down Columbus Avenue. Carmen grabs at Carlos but he kicks her to the curb. “Stop or we’ll shoot!” I hear. We turn the corner, into a side street, streaking between cars. But it is no use. More cops are in front of us. “This way,” I cry, and we head into an apartment building, knocking over the ancient doorman. Carlos stops.

“I stay here and make trouble,” he says. I look into his eyes. “It’s the only way, Hector. You and Sam are leaders—you must not get caught.”

“Carlos—” I say.

“Go!” he says.

“Carlos—!”

He kicks at me as the cops appear in the doorway. We open the door to the courtyard. “If you shoot him, we will demonstrate. He has no knife or gun. Remember Gilligan the cop!”

“Come quietly, kid, and we won’t hurt you,” they say.

“C’mon!” says Sam.

I look at Carlos, my friend. “Good luck—” I call. Just as the police go for him, he turns and tosses me his briefcase. “The diagrams!” he yells, and then he has slipped between them and is running like a maniac, in circles, screeching Spanish. Sam and I leave, satchels in both my hands. The police open the door to the courtyard, but Carlos throws himself between their legs. We hurry down and journey through a network of cellars, making our way to freedom.

At night I confer with the man who protects the rights of the Puerto Rican people. He is my friend, and he says he will represent Carlos. Jail, he believes, cannot be avoided. I have my own idea, though, and we discuss it. Instructions are sent to Carlos.

In court, Carlos’ teacher testifies that he is truly a C.R.M.D., Carlos attacks the court psychiatrist, he sings dirty Spanish songs while the judge speaks, his grandmother tells of a home with ten children and no father, and the man who protects the rights of the Puerto Rican people makes an eloquent speech about sickness instead of sin, help instead of punishment.

The plan works. Carlos is sent to a state hospital. The hospital is far away on Long Island and Sam and I travel there on Sunday afternoon when all the other families come, their shopping bags filled with food and clothing, their eyes glazed. Carlos is happy to see us, but he cannot shake our hands. He is tied in a strait-jacket. Around us the other patients and visitors communicate with each other. All the attendants are Negro and Puerto Rican and Carlos says they take special care of him. He asks how the election is going and we tell him that his heroic act has made our victory certain. He asks me what he should do to stay out of jail and I look at the strait-jacket and I tell him he is doing fine. I ask him if he wants anything. He says he wants to return to Puerto Rico.

We go back to the city in the hot subway. Everybody is out on my street. They ask me about Carlos. Children are playing with the garbage, the men are drinking beer, and music fills the air. Everybody is talking about Mr. Sanchez, who threw his baby against the wall that afternoon. The police have taken him away. Carmen’s big sister, her hair bleached a crazy pink color, comes switching down the street, looking for business. It is too hot. Everybody is sweaty and greasy. Under a lamppost she comes to me. “When you get some money, kid,” she says, “I be your first. Okay? I give you a good time.”

“Carmen gives it to me for nothing,” I say. “She gives it to everybody for free.”

She curses me and says she will kill Carmen. I go home but I roll around on my bed in the hot room and I cannot sleep. On the next visiting day I see that Carlos is changing. He does not smile. His eyes are almost closed, his neck is stiff. We tell him that we will wait until he comes out to have the victory party. He does not listen. He says that if he cannot go back to Puerto Rico he will stay in the hospital. He says it is not so bad in the hospital. It is like C.R.M.D.

“I stay here a long time,” Carlos says. “I getting to like it here.”

The next Sunday we come with good news. We have won the election.

“Hector had it figured right,” Sam says. “It was a landslide.”

“Now we wait for you to return,” I say. “So that we can have the victory party.”

“If I get out, I kill Carmen,” he says. “I tell my doctor that.”

I talk to him about the party we are going to make—the food, the music, the girls. “We got you to thank for being where we are,” Sam says.

“I din do nothing,” Carlos says. We keep talking to him, building his confidence, telling him what we feel. I speak to one of the Spanish attendants and point out to him how calm Carlos has become.

“Carlos,” I say. “If you say you will not make trouble, Mr. Garcia will take the jacket off.”

“I no make trouble.”

The jacket comes off, but Carlos continues to sulk, and I have little hope for him. He talks of only two things, the return to Puerto Rico and the murder of Carmen. When we are ready to leave, he asks if we will do his laundry for him and we say yes. He goes to his room and returns with a bundle of clothes. When we leave him, his eyes are almost shut, his thin body stiff, and I wonder if I do the right thing. Maybe he be better off in jail.

“Tomorrow in assembly they swear us in,” Sam says when we are standing at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 8oth Street. Downstairs in the basement my people are singing with Pastor Ayala. The neon lights blink on and off:

IGLESIA DE CRISTO MISIONERA
VIDA ETERNA, INC.

The sound of electric guitars and tambourines fills me with joy.

“Yes,” I say, and finger my medallion. The music is fierce.

“It’s really something,” Sam says. “We have what we want—but with Carl where he is, it doesn’t seem to matter, does it?”

“No,” I say.

Carmen is standing against a building, in the shadows, alone. She comes to me and I spit. “Go walk the streets,” I say. “Like your sister.”

“Hector,” she pleads. “I am sorry. Forgive me—”

Sam slaps her. “Your mother sniffs bicycle seats,” he says.

“Please,” says Carmen, but I turn my back on her. She walks away from us, slowly. I feel something for her—but it passes. Her old friends exit from the church and shun her. They say they have prayed for Carlos. Rafaela says she sends candy and cards to the hospital. Everybody wants to visit him. I look beyond our circle of friends and see Carmen fade into the lights and noise of Columbus Avenue, heading uptown toward Harlem, las tetas grandes drooping toward the ground.

Sam and I shake hands. “Some day,” he says. “You and me, we’re gonna own this city, Hector.”

“We will always be friends,” I say.

We leave each other and I carry Carlos’ laundry over my shoulder, into my apartment. My grandmother says she will take care of it. She has food ready for me and we eat together, without talking. Then I go to my room and try to do homework, but I can think only of Carlos my friend, and of the party that cannot be until he returns. I open the bundle of laundry on my bed, separating the socks from the underwear, the shirts from the handkerchiefs, and then I see it. My heart leaps! I grab it and hold it in front of me, then turn it around. The lettering is stamped in black: PROPERTY OF N.Y. STATE—Carlos has sent his strait-jacket home!

I stuff it under my shirt and run down the stairs, into the hot street, waving my hand to all I pass. “Carlos will return!” I shout to the girls on the corner. “Carlos will return!” I cross Columbus Avenue and race toward Sam’s house on Central Park West. In my mind I can see Carlos’ sulky face as he sees me discovering what he has done, and I know that he will sleep happy tonight, a sheepish smile next to his pillow.

Sam is hysterical when I show the strait-jacket to him, and we tie each other into it and laugh and talk of the party we will have when Carlos returns. “We will show them something, Mr. President,” I say. “Oh, how we will show them something.” And then, with devil’s eyes, the president glances at the closet where the briefcases are hidden, and offers his vice-president a cigar.